


Helpless

by talefeathers



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Barricade Day, Gen, Probable Canon Divergence, Probable Historical Inaccuracy, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7105384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lafayette has a bad feeling about the fervor brewing about Lamarque's funeral procession, but he feels helpless to steer things right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helpless

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a #NoShameNovember fic, but I never finished it, so I came back to it for Barricade Day. I hope it is an acceptable offering for the feast!

Lafayette had heard the rumors leading up to Lamarque’s funeral. He often made self-deprecating jokes about his bad joints and the absurd herbal remedies he had to mix into his morning tea just to keep ticking, but he liked to think that his mind, at least, had stayed sharp, and that his ears still picked up the pulse of the people. Lamarque’s death had snapped something within Paris that had been bending for some time, and thus it made sense that his funeral would host a display of the fracture.

Knowing all of this, he wasn’t surprised when murmurs began to rustle through the crowd of attendees as he accompanied the carriage bearing Lamarque’s casket, nor when these murmurs swelled into shouts.

_“Long live the Republic!”_ cried strong, young voices over the drum of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels. _“Down with Louis-Philippe!”_

Lafayette’s hands curled into fists. His heart beat with theirs, of course. Revolution was woven into his very veins; the very pull that guided these students and workers now was what had guided him ever since dedicating his heart to American independence over 50 years ago. But there was a darkness here that stilled the fire in his blood. An apprehension.

This should be the perfect time to stage a rebellion, but he knew, suddenly and with certainty, that it was not. He knew that if he didn’t stop them now, they would be slaughtered.

He was jerked from these thoughts when a shoulder connected with his chest and he stumbled back a step.

“Pardon me, monsieur,” said the student who had knocked him, flashing him a quick, breathless smile before continuing to climb up onto the carriage that Lafayette walked beside.

Lafayette opened his mouth to call after him, but was struck dumb by the flash of a memory. Because something about his smile, about the hope burning bright in his eyes, (and yes, about the freckles dusting his nose)... for a moment Lafayette swore he had seen John Laurens standing before him.

_You really are getting old,_ he scolded himself, forcing himself back to the reality of the chaos erupting around him.

He moved finally, jogging to catch up with the now-hijacked carriage.

“Listen to me!” he shouted uselessly, one voice against the fever pitch of hundreds. “Please, the National Guard --!”

He could already hear them approaching. This situation was slipping through his fingers, indifferent to him, but he had to try. Leaving things to fate had never been his style.

He grabbed the rebel closest to him by the arm.

“You, what’s your name?” he asked.

_HERCULES MULLIGAN,_ he heard, looking at the young man’s broad shoulders and bold waistcoat.

“Bahorel,” the true answer swam through a moment later.

“Bahorel,” Lafayette repeated. “Bahorel, we have to warn your friends -- this is not how your movement needs to proceed. Not now.”

“This is the _only_ way,” Bahorel protested. “Too many have suffered for too long at the hands of the monarchy.”

“Not like this,” Lafayette pleaded. “I know that you are ready, but the people are not; more importantly the military isn’t, and you will need their support. Having the National Guard opposite you is suicide.”

Bahorel’s square, confident posture bent just a bit, but he tightened his jaw.

“But there are ways that we can fight, tactics to make up for our numbers,” he said. 

Lafayette took a deep breath to keep from giving the side of Bahorel’s head a good smack.

“I was commissioned into military service in _seventeen-seventy-one,”_ he said, carefully enunciating each word. “That’s, what, four decades before you were born?” 

Bahorel went as red as his waistcoat. Lafayette continued.

“If I say that this won’t work, it won’t.”

Bahorel nodded.

“I’ll tell them, Monsieur de Lafayette,” he said, “but I can’t promise they’ll listen.”

“I know,” he sighed. He reached out to give the young man’s shoulder a squeeze. “Do what you can. And stay alive.”

Bahorel bounded off to rejoin his friends, already bellowing at one of them in a voice that carried impressively over the tumult. Lafayette couldn’t help a small smile.

That was when the first of the gunshots sounded.

“No,” he groaned, racing toward the front of the procession where a scuffle had broken out between the students and the National Guard, where he almost tripped over a young insurgent who had fallen. Seeing that he was in danger of being trampled by the swelling crowd, Lafayette helped him up.

“Are you all right, son?” he asked, handing the young man the cap that had fallen from his head.

“I’m not your son,” the young man spat, yanking himself from Lafayette’s grip and rejoining the fray, and Lafayette wondered how he hadn’t recognized Hamilton before, freshly 19 and blazing, still grimy and tough from a life spent pulling himself up, still sharp, still pissed, still alive, alive, alive.

“Monsieur de Lafayette!”

Lafayette tried to blink himself back to the deteriorating situation around him, but was stuck for a moment in America, where the gunfire hadn’t shaken him and the most powerful army in the world had knelt before a mess of young fury. America, where you bet on the ragtags and the underdogs because its magic favored fervor over strength.

The ragtags here in Paris were rallying, but Paris was built on the old measures of might. The underdogs scrambled to build a barricade that Lafayette knew was really a pyre.

“Monsieur de Lafayette!”

Lafayette turned to acknowledge the guardsman who was calling to him.

“We have to get you to safety, monsieur,” he said. “Please, allow us to escort you to your house.”

\--

He told himself the next morning that he could not have saved them.

They would never have listened to him, he insisted over and over; he was an old man. His voice would have drowned in the roar of young blood. He would have been in the way. He would probably have ended up just as dead as those boys.

It didn’t stop the guilt from curling into his chest, just tightly enough to make breathing uncomfortable.

_They needed a general,_ it whispered from behind his lungs. _They needed a Washington. What would you be now if you hadn’t had him when you were young and full of flame? They needed you, Lafayette. You left them to their deaths._

“There was nothing I could have done,” he murmured, trying to massage the tightness from his chest. “I did everything I could, I tried…”

Still, the guilt whispered to him, competed with his lungs for air. And it lodged there, whispering, until the day Lafayette, the last of his revolutionary set, dragged in his final breath.


End file.
